Mid-Week Field Notes–February 15, 2023

Field Notes

Some very quick things:

• My new YA novel in verse, Facing the Enemy: How a Nazi Youth Camp in America Tested a Friendship (Calkins Creek/Astra Books for Young Readers, Fall 2023) has gone into copy editing. Photo permissions are completed, along with captions and placement.
• I’m hard at work on the proposal for a new YA novel in verse that takes place in 1943 on a US troop ship en route to Greenland.
• I’m participating in a “talk-back” at the Long Branch (NJ) Theater on March 11 about Ethel Rosenberg. The New Jersey Repertory Company presents “The Rosenberg Strange Fruit Project.” The adoptive father of the two Rosenberg sons, Abe Meeropol, wrote “Strange Fruit,” hauntingly rendered by Billie Holiday.
• Each week I mean to send my poetry and short fiction into the work. Each week passes without having done it. Sigh.
• New writing workshops for March have been posted. They include Writing Family History, Writing the Past, Using Photographs to Craft Story, and Short Shrift: Writing the Short Story. In all I use the Amherst Writers & Artists method of writing to timed prompts.
• Finally, the Mercer County Holocaust, Genocide & Human Rights Education Center hosts a new webinar on February 22, featuring Dr. Eliyana Adler of Penn State University.

Have a good week!